Prime Evil

Please...tell us more. How far away is this?

Yes...that' the one. My apologies - I should have been more specific.

There's also Alphetar's Revolution system which has some interesting innovations. And for something really strange, try the Sabre RPG from Dragonsbane entertainment - an unusual mash up of d100 and d20 systems...

Thanks! As an aside, I'd point out that if you really want to play with adult themes religion is another hot button topic. For my own personal taste, one thing that Runequest has consistently done right in most of it's incarnations is to treat shamanism and religion seriously. Most RPGs shy away from realistic depictions of animistic or polytheistic worldviews, perhaps as a direct consequence of the "satanic panic" of the early 1980s. By contrast, Runequest has always depicted these worldviews with a sense of respect alien to most RPGs. Most old-school RPGs reduce the miracles associated with the divine to a source of cheap buffs and heals (to use MMORPG slang). Runequest has allowed players to experience to atmosphere of an animistic or polytheistic worldview without necessarily committing to them in real life. In particular, most RPG avoid the notion that the sacred may be immanent in the mundane world or that spiritual experiences may be accessible to ordinary people. The cultic structures of Glorantha owe something to the mystery religions of the ancient world, which is another huge plus. I ascribe a lot of this to the influence of Greg Stafford, whose personal involvement in alternative religious circles is well-known (e.g. he was a Director of Shaman's Drum magazine).

This is awesome. Cults of Terror was the very first sourcebook that I bought for RQII back in the day. I've still got that copy sitting in the bookshelf next to my desk. As a kickstarter backer, I'm delighted to see each of these books resurrected in this format and hope that we'll see more of the Chaosium back catalogue in this form once all of the work associated with the current kickstarter is done.

I'd take a close look at the Icelandic family sagas for an example of how to run an "adult" adventure along these lines involving the consequences of weak law enforcement. The family sagas are unlike anything else in medieval literature, being closer to a modern novels than medieval literary forms. They usually revolve around bitter feuds in a fledgling nation that had a complex legal system but no central government and minimal law enforcement. There is a good reason why Njáls saga was listed in the recommended reading list for RQII (along with Snorri Sturluson's King Harald's Saga). The blood feud in Njáls saga spans generations and shows how obligation leads good people to commit terrible crimes in the name of family honour. There's a story here with adult themes rarely depicted in RPGs. Personally, I'd also recommend the Laxdæla saga for the doomed love triangle between Kjartan Ólafsson, Bolli Þorleiksson, and Guðrún Ósvífrsdóttir in the Breiðafjörður region. This work involves a romantic rivalry leading into a spiral of vengeance that ultimately destroys both of the suitors and leads Guðrún into a life of seclusion.Once again, the bones of this story can be reworked to create a tragic adventure built around adult themes. Treat these as bleak and gritty Scandinavian crime stories - a genre which is alive and kicking right now - and you've got a story that can go to some very dark places indeed. Interestingly, the closest thing I've seen recently in mainstream media that captures the same atmosphere is the recent Captain America: Civil War movie with the intense personal conflict between Captain America and Iron Man. We know that both of them are worthy men with a strong sense of principle, but they end up in a tragic conflict with one another that threatens to tear the superhero community apart. Ultimately Marvel Studios pull back from the full implications of the conflict, but nonetheless it is remarkably strong content for a superhero movie and comes close to capturing the tone of the Icelandic sagas. Notice the way that both parties in the feud are depicted as honourable - neither has a big sign around their neck indicating that they should be regarded as the bad guy. Both have human failings and ethical blind spots as well as admirable qualities. This approach is almost a prerequisite for building an adventure around "adult" themes. In fact, read as much ancient and medieval literature as you can to get a feel for great authors handle adult themes. Read the outstanding translations of the Iliad and Odyssey by Robert Fagles. Read the translation of Beowulf by Seamus Heaney (or better still, get the audiobook where he reads his superb translation aloud). Get a good translation of the Völsung saga, such as that of Jesse L. Byock or wait for the forthcoming one by Jackson Crawford. Read the final third of Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur and pay attention to the collapse of King Arthur's Court and the Fellowship of the Round Table due to human vices. The authors of these works lived closer to "adult" themes in real life than most modern people and handle the gritty realities of their own time with sensitivity and skill. Adult stories do not necessarily involve gratuitous gore and sexuality, but do not shrink away from depicting these things where they are appropriate for the themes at hand. Consider the way that Beowulf carefully balances the story of Beowulf's first victory against the story of his final defeat. Look at the way that subtle structural oppositions between youth and age, peace and warfare, loyalty and betrayal, are woven through the story. For example, a mention of the Finnesburg incident is worked into the narrative to prefigure the ultimate fate of the mead hall at Heorot and to remind the audience that the victory won by Beowulf is ultimately hollow. One thing that all of these classic works share is a tragic sense of the transience of life, a theme that also emerges in the greatest works of modern fantasy - whether it be in the grim moodiness of Robert E. Howard's Conan stories, the pervasive sense of doom and decline in Clark Ashton Smith's Zothique or Jack Vance's Dying Earth stories, the slow defeat of Tolkien's Middle Earth as the wonders of the First Age fall into shadow, the growing sense of mortality in Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea novels, and many more. In fact, I would argue that this is the defining theme that runs through modern fantasy literature. Great fantasy typically contains a pervasive sense of loss or an acute awareness of life's brevity - or both at the same time. And yet RPGs rarely grapple with truly adult themes of mortality, grief, and loss in any meaningful way - perhaps because the experience systems in many early RPGs lend themselves so well to adolescent power fantasies or perhaps because fantasy games shied away from themes that might be considered "religious" for so long due to the influence of the Satanic panic during the 1980s. Even today, most gamers don't think or death and mortality and grief as "adult" themes in the same way that they think of sex and violence.

Cool. It would be sensible to wait a few weeks until the situation becomes clearer, but I always want new books as soon as I see them

So what will be the best way to order for those of us down here in Australia? Directly from Design Mechanism or via Aeon Games? Either way the international postage will be nasty, but it looks like Aeon has a few books in hardcover that aren't yet available directly via the Design Mechanism. Is this correct?

If you want something truly obscure for Germanic literature, do some research into Wade's Boat - particularly the links between Vaði in Þiðrekssaga and the figure of Wade mentioned by Chaucer. As late as the 16th century, the Thomas Speght could confidently assume that his audience was familiar with Wade's Boat and named as Guingelot. Yet the whole thing is hopelessly tangled up with the story of Wayland Smith (as Vaði was the father of Völund in Þiðrekssaga) as well as the Nibelungenlied. We even have a couple of lines from an early poem about Wade hinting that his story was well-known in Anglo-Saxon England and was tied up with a memory of the Gothic King Theodoric. Some detective work provides tantalizing hints of a lost Germanic epic of which a faint echo survived into later English folklore. We'll never know the full story, but it can be reconstructed in various ways for roleplaying purposes!

I'd love to have three or four copies of the Guide to Glorantha. Now...about that second mortgage....

I've noticed that some gamers purchase two copies of books they are really interested in - one for the bookshelf and one for the gaming table.

Interesting. I hadn't considered the possibility of using the patron system from Elric to simulate the patron system from DCC. In hindsight, it's blindingly obvious though.

Can you make a new character out of the dismembered body parts of the last four?

Based upon hints from the Finnsburgh fragment, Beowulf, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, and later works (including Nennius and Layamon's Brut), here's my version: Hengest and his brother Horsa were in the retinue of a Danish leader named Hnæf. Apparently Hnæf was visiting his sister, Hildeburh, at a hall at Finnsburgh. Hildeburh had married a Frisian leader named Finn in an attempt to make peace between the Danes and the Frisians. (The later author Nennius mentions a figure named Finn Folcwald in the genealogy of Hengest and Horsa, possibly a distorted memory of this incident). Unfortunately, the peace was precarious and Finn plotted treachery against his guests. A large group of Frisian warriors mounted a surprise attack on the hall at Finnsburgh where Hnæf and his retinue were staying just before dawn. The sources mention the assault involved a force of sixty attackers. During the subsequent fighting, Hnaef is killed and Hengest takes over as leader. It appears that Finn and Hildeburh had a young son who was also tragically slain during the fighting. The Danes put up a stiff resistance and a stalemate is reached. The Danish forces do not have the strength to fight their way to freedom and the Frisian forces do not have the strength to defeat them. Hengest negotiates a truce with the Frisians, agreeing to surrender in exchange for their lives and equal rights to Finn's own companions. It is agreed that Hnæf's men will stay in Finnsburgh for the rest of the winter, returning to their homeland when the weather improves. Hnæf and Hildeburh's dead son were burned together on a funeral pyre. Remarkably, the truce holds for a number of months and Hengest's men remain in Finn's hall despite the shame of being forced into a truce the slayer of their lord. As spring arrives, one of Hengest's followers - an individual named Hunlafing - placed a sword named Battle Flame into his lap as a not-so-subtle reminder that he had a duty to seek vengeance for the murder of Hnæf (Beowulf 1142-1153). As a result, Hengest treacherously breaks the pact of loyalty he had made with Finn and slaughtered Finn and all of his followers in their own mead hall. Incidentally, this is one of those classic moral dilemmas that early Germanic literature loved so much, where Hengest was forced to choose between his duty to seek vengeance for the death of Hnæf and the peace treaty he had made with Finn. In any case, Hengest left Finnsburgh with Hildeburh, returning the Danish princess to her own people. Unfortunately, the Danes feared renewed warfare with the Frisians and decided to exile Hengest and his followers (including his brother Horsa) for their actions. The slaughter of the Frisians in their own hall had become notorious and would be remembered throughout the Germanic world several centuries later. Nennius mentions that that Hengest and Horsa had been driven into exile, but does not explain the reason (Nennius, Historia Bittonum, Ch. 31). Driven into exile, Hengest three ships containing his followers landed in southern Britain on the Kentish coast, where they took service as mercenaries with Vortigern. Although Vortigern gets a bad rap, it is likely that he was following late Roman practice by recruiting barbarian mercenaries as foederati and offering them land in exchange for service in accordance with the established concept of hospitalitas, which allowed the state to acquire private land for the purpose of billeting barbarian military forces. And from there the story proceeds as per the well-known version...

I'm looking forward to this as it is a topic I'm familiar with from my academic background From a gaming perpective, I've always been fascinated by Tolkein's theory that the Hengest who fought the Battle of Finnsburg is the same as the Hengest who led his men across the sea to Kent at the invitation of Vortigern. This approach is at least plausible and makes it possible to tie the Saxon settlement into the broader world of Germanic mythology. It also provides a cool explanation of explains WHY Hengest went to Britain - he was in so much trouble after the Fres-wæl ("Frisian slaughter") that fleeing overseas as a mercenary looked attractive. It also allows makes it possible to events from Beowulf into the broader story. If we identify Beowulf's Hygelac with the Danish king Chlochilaicus mentioned in Gregory of Tours, it becomes possible to date the ill-fated raid into Frisia to the period between 515 and 520, then it becomes possible to bring in material from Beowulf. It's a fascinating period.

Happy birthday, Loz!

I must say that I really like the approach of having simple core rules but many options. It makes the system highly adaptable.

That's good news. Back in the day, Chaosium had a reputation as one of the best and most professional companies for freelancers to work with. It also had a reputation as a company that was very friendly to fan activities - at a time when other industry players such as TSR were increasingly litigious. This paid off when the Gloranthan mailing list krpt the flame alive during the dark times. It would be great if the new improved Chaosium can recapture some of that lustre.

Interestingly, I just found that a local game store still has a couple of RQ 6 hardcovers. I'm considering picking up another copy just for posterity while I wait for Mythras

We can hope that there's light at the end of that particular tunnel, but Matt made it sound like there wouldn't be much activity on the Legend front for a few months yet.

Now that I've had a chance to review everything, I really like the rules for Traits and Conflicts.

Even though I'm not running Glorantha these days, I'd like to second this opinion. I was a kickstarter backer and unfortunately my copy of volume 1 got damaged during delivery (thank you Australia Post!), but I'll be picking up the reprint in a heartbeat. Hopefully there will be a pre-order option? The Guide to Glorantha shows why the setting is right up there as one of the best pieces of worldbuilding in the industry. There are only a few other settings that come close, such as M.A.R. Barker's Tékumel and possibly Harn. As for the artwork, I love the use of heroic age Greece as an inspiration - it makes a welcome change from all of the generic faux-medieval artwork out there and helps to distinguish the setting.

It would be nice to see some new Legend releases, but it seems that Mongoose have nothing announced for the next six months *sigh*

These are the key selling points for me, even though I'm increasingly running a weird hybrid of several d100 games. Out of curiosity, will Design Mechanism be offering anything similar to the RQ Gateway License for Mythras to allow third-party publishers to produce compatible material? And if so, has anything been revealed about the terms and conditions yet?

All of which are valid reasons! I've been playing around with a tweak where Hero Points are replaced by something closer to the Doubloon system from Pirates & Dragons and can be spent on the fly to perform cool stunts similar to those represented by Heroic Abilities. It's a bit freeform at the moment, but seems to work reasonably well in practice. It also gets away from purely combat-focused abilities as I only allow players to perform a couple of stunts per scene - which makes it difficult for characters to hoard all of their points for use in combat. I do rather like the Mysticism system in RQ 6 / Mythras though.